Citizen Power

On Monday, March 23, President Obama spoke specifically about clean energy, and described plans to spend about $59 billion in economic stimulus funds and $150 billion from the federal budget to promote a  clean energy future.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, (aka the stimulus bill) officially includes $39 billion the Energy Department and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy.  Even so, Obama didn’t say a lot that we haven’t heard before.  In fact, he mentioned cap and trade and energy again on Tuesday night during his press conference.  He’s a big fan of cap and trade (I’m not). I think we need to take more drastic action.

But the most interesting part of the speech were the remarks made by MIT President, Susan Hockfield, said before the President spoke.  She described our current energy problems as:  rapidly increasing energy demand, energy security, and solving the climate change crisis.  Hockfield called clean energy an historic investment, and said the stimulus bill makes a major investment in energy stimulus,  including 6.5 billion for R&D, which to her was the most important part, being the president of a major and prestigious university known for its research.

She called the stimulus bill the largest and most important investment in technology since Sputnik inspired the launch of the Apollo program.

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